Explore Spirituality

Hala Khouri has been teaching yoga and movement for over 25 years. As a trained psychologist, she does clinical work with people struggling with trauma, depression, and anxiety. She trains clinicians and yoga teachers as well as educators and non-profits to be trauma informed. She and Rabbi Rami discuss her new book, Peace from Anxiety: Get Grounded, Build Resilience & Stay Connected Amidst the Chaos.

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Brian McLaren is a leading voice advocating for a new kind of Christianity. He was featured in Spirituality and Health’s January/February 2021 issue as one of the seven trailblazers who are helping define the future of spirituality.

He and Rabbi Rami discuss McLaren's latest book Faith After Doubt, and the dangerous rise of right-wing Christian nationalism.

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This week it is our pleasure to interview Luvvie Ajayi Jones. Luvvie is an author, a sought-after speaker, and a podcast host who thrives at the intersection of comedy, technology and justice. She penned the New York Times bestselling I’m Judging You: The Do-Better Manual. Her latest book is Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual. Who is a professional troublemaker? They are the necessary truth-tellers in the room. Listen to the podcast to find out why they are so vital. @Luvvie

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Rabbi Rami's guest this week is author Natalie Goldberg. She is the author of 15 books, including the classic Writing Down the Bones, (Shambhala, 1986). Her new book is Three Simple Lines: A Writer's Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku.

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This episode’s guest is Maci Daye. Daye is a licensed professional counselor, a certified Hakomi therapist, and certified sex therapist. She and Rabbi Rami discuss the connection between spirituality and sex, and how mindfulness techniques can be used to rediscover erotic potential.

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Rabbi Rami’s guest this week is Rev. Jes Kast. She is a pastor at Faith United Church of Christ in State College, Penn.

Rev. Kast is featured as one of the trailblazers in the Jan./Feb. 2021 issue of Spirituality and Health, in the feature story “7 Spiritual Radicals.” It interviews seven leaders who are redefining contemporary religion and making it more inclusive.

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This week, Rabbi Rami speaks with Kevin Anderson, Ph.D. Dr. Anderson is a psychologist, life coach, author, and speaker. His recent books include Now Is Where God Lives: Nested Meditations to Delight the Mind and Awaken the Soul and The Inconceivable Surprise of Living: Sustaining Wisdom for Spiritual Beings Trying to Be Human. 

Using a playful approach to words, such as with nested meditations, can be a form of cognitive therapy, Anderson says, helping us deal with stuck emotions and maladaptive thoughts.

Listen to the episode to learn how to use the technique.

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Individualism and capitalism are simply not working. Author Sarah Wilson talks with Rabbi Rami about the challenges we face as humans, such as climate change and racial injustice, and proposes healthier systems to heal a fractured world.

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Robyn Moreno is a certified yoga teacher, trained life coach, and practicing curandera (Mexican folk healer).

In the past, she led a go-go life in publishing and as an Emmy-nominated TV host. But internally, she was in crisis—with unresolved childhood trauma and deep burnout. She calls this a soul crisis.

Moreno found deeper roots, and healing, when she transitioned from media maven to modern curandera, rediscovering her family’s Mexican culture—and herself. She and Rabbi Rami discuss her journey to studying an earth-based wisdom tradition that her great-grandmother had practiced, curanderismo.

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Who do you want at your deathbed? We do not like to think about such things, yet we will all die, and wrestling with such finitude can actually make our lives richer. Rabbi Rami’s guest this week is Lydia Dugdale MD, an associate professor of medicine and director of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at Columbia University. She is an internal medicine primary care doctor and a medical ethicist.

Dr. Dugdale is a frequent contributor to Spirituality & Health, and her new book, The Lost Art of Dying (July 2020), explores hopeful perspectives on death and dying—and living with intention—via the lost medieval practice of ars moriendi.

Ars moriendi were originally two texts from the medieval era and when taken in the context of the Bubonic Plague, death was literally all around. The idea is you do not know when death will come upon you, so you need to always be ready and prepare for a good death. It sounds morbid, but doing the work can make life more meaningful. Take, for example, reconciling with family before it is too late.

Dugdale finished her book prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and while it is thankfully not the Plague, death is again front and center in our culture.

Dr. Dugdale and Rabbi Rami discuss, for example, the important difference between dying alone and lonely dying. At the height of the pandemic, she reports working in the hospital and seeing, due to the shortage of PPE that would have allowed closer human contact, patients dying in a very lonely way, Dugdale. “To have patients die and have their last contact be through an iPad, it was a tragedy not only for the patients and for their families, but also for the doctors and nurses.”

So what happens when we die? For more on that, you will have to listen to the podcast.

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